Facilitating Transfer Students’ Transition to a Liberal Arts College

One of the projects I worked on as Associate Dean of the Faculty at Washington & Jefferson College was improving the process of attracting and admitting transfer students. We looked at our current processes and found many internal silos that formed obstacles for students who were trying to navigate an already difficult system. We made several changes and I wrote about the experience in this essay, published in the AACRAO publication College and University.

There were two "externalities" that motivated our effort: A demographic change that was complicating the business of attracting traditional 4-year students to the liberal arts model of education; and the great recession of 2008, which was making it difficult for everyone to finance a traditional 4-year degree. Here's how I situated this moment in the introduction to the essay:

Two phenomena have combined in recent years to make the student recruitment process at selective private liberal arts colleges more competitive than ever: The first is the demographic change of which we have been aware for several years. Overall, the U.S. public high school population is decreasing. While some regions, such as the southwest and Florida, are experiencing a population boom, others— particularly the northeastern states—are experiencing dramatic decreases. This has presented a particular challenge to mid-Atlantic colleges that historically have been considered “regional”; over the past five years, many of them have responded by adopting national student recruitment strategies. The second phenomenon is the more recent economic recession and slow-growth recovery, which together have further diminished the supply of prospective students and have made parents more aware of their negotiating power in the admissions process. In this environment, college officials carefully examine their recruitment efforts, business costs, and fee structures. They are committed to enrolling freshman classes of comparable quality to previous years’ but without “buying” them at an unsustainable discount.

To help us understand the problem I drew two process diagrams, one representing our current process, and the other representing how we hoped to improve it. The key was to provide as much information to the student, as early as possible, about what courses would transfer from the prior institution to ours. Here's the "before" diagram":

Data flow diagram of original transfer process.

And here's the "after" diagram:

Data flow diagram of revised transfer process.

I made these diagrams in Omnigraffle. The graphic designer at College & University did a much better job with them for the magazine. I see someone put the text of my essay online here, but without the "before" and "after" diagrams. To see the full original you'll need to contact me, or get it from College & University. It was also re-published in The Transfer Handbook: Promoting Student Success, AACRAO, April 2015, 241-49.

Header image is a close-up of my "after" diagram, made with OmniGraffle.